TACTICAL SKILLS & STRATEGY

Long Term Athlete Development

These books are broad and general in topics and cover dozens of factors that contribute to talent development over the course of one’s childhood.

Brian McCormick is an author, clinician, coach, and consultant

Brian T. McCormick, PhD is a professional basketball coach, consultant, and clinician. McCormick has coached professionally in Denmark, Ireland, and Sweden, taking a team to the finals in Denmark's 1st Division and being selected to coach in Sweden's Damligan All-Star Game. He has coached CYO, AAU, high school, junior college, and college basketball in the United States, and worked as a strength and conditioning coach for two junior-college basketball programs. McCormick has directed clinics in Canada, China, Greece, Ghana, India, Macedonia, Trinidad & Tobago, and throughout the United States, and spoken at coaching, strength & conditioning, and sports psychology conferences in the United States and Canada. McCormick completed his PhD in Exercise and Sports Science at the University of Utah, and has had peer-reviewed papers published in the International Journal of Exercise Science, International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching, and Strength & Conditioning Journal.

Author

McCormick has published 20 books for basketball coaches, many of which have spent time on Amazon's top 10 books for basketball. The books have been well-received and recommended by prominent coaches such as Fran Fraschilla and Mike Dunlap.

Clinician

McCormick has directed camps and clinics for players and coaches around the world, most recently in Jackson Hole, WY and Waddington, NY. He also has been a speaker at clinics for Basketball BC, Basketball Manitoba, and USA Basketball.

Coach

McCormick has coached youth, high school, college, and professional teams; he has coached boys and girls, men and women. He has coached in championship series, AAU National Tournaments, and all-star games. He currently is the head coach of a women's junior college team.

Consultant

McCormick has consulted with numerous high school, college, and professional coaches and players on skill development, practice design, and strength & conditioning.

Latest news

When I presented for Positive Coaching Alliance working with Ray Lokar, he often said that coaches work in the fish bowl; everyone watches the coach from the outside, often without knowledge of the environment, but the coach always is in front of an audience. This pressure from the fish bowl shapes many of the negative behaviors that we see from coaches: I once watched a coach who would yell loud enough for everyone in the audience to hear him, “Player, we practiced that yesterday for 20 minutes. How can you make that mistake?” There was no information; in essence, he was saying, “Look, I did everything that I could at practice and it is your child who is messing up, not me.” I was appalled, but I see this behavior to some degree fairly often. Read more about Steve Nash on Mike D’Antoni’s Genius

People often discuss player development and European basketball with me. Often, I am told, and I read, that we (coaches in the United States) need to develop players like in Europe. I don’t necessarily agree with the premise, but I often will engage in the discussions. When I do, it seems as though the coaches want a magic potion, because every change based on my experiences that I offer, they dismiss as unnecessary or impractical. Possible changes based on my experience: Read more about We need to develop players like in Europe

I imagine the following is based directly or indirectly on the writings of Mark O’Sullivan, Mark Upton, Richard Bailey, Stuart Armstrong, and others. If you spend enough time on social media and basketball blogs, someone will suggest that the United States is falling behind in basketball because of a lack of coach education. Now, there Read more about Coach development, not coach education or certification[…]

Seventeen years after I first was hired as an assistant college basketball coach, I was hired as a part-time head coach at the junior college level. I would like to think that I have earned the opportunity with my work and persistence, but the actual process of landing the job was good fortune and luck. Because many people ask how to get such and such job, here is my story (following my story of how I was hired to coach in Europe). Read more about Luck and landing a college coaching job

Originally published in Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter 6.4. Now available in Kindle and paperback. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter here.

After their practice on Monday, two teenagers from our women’s team worked along the baseline on a two-ball drill that I had introduced the previous week. This is my primary purpose for introducing challenging dribbling drills: To inspire players to practice on their own. We do not spend much time on dribbling. My men’s team generally practices dribbling on Thursdays when we have fewer players. With our skill workouts, we usually work on general dribbling in one of the two workouts per week. In the 11-12 hours of practice and workouts each week, we spend roughly 20 minutes on dribbling (of course, other drills, games, and scrimmages incorporate dribbling). Read more about Two-ball drills, transfer and inspiration